Catalog From The Beyond: THE BAT (1959)

How the hell do I introduce a legend like Vincent Price? This is a guy who has starred in scores of horror roles and carried the banner for the genre in an era when the public saw it as little more than a breeding ground for psychopaths and miscreants. There isn’t much that I can say about this man that hasn’t been said a dozen times over, but I do have this: Vincent Price looked very much like my grandma. Or I suppose my grandma looked very much like Vincent Price. Don’t get me wrong, she was a beautiful lady, but she had Price’s ability to raise an eyebrow in a way to convey pretty much any emotion (usually mild annoyance). So for me, sitting down for a Vincent Price flick is like sitting down with a family member. Sure, he’s typically evil to a mustache-twirling degree, but who doesn’t have at least one such character tucked into their family tree? With this in mind, I got to have another little reunion with Price while I watched him in the 1959 murder mystery, The Bat.

Based on the 1908 novel The Circular Staircase, The Bat follows Cornelia Van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead), a mystery author renting a house in a town with a history that includes a serial killer known as “The Bat,” whose modus operandi was to wear a black mask and sharp metal fingernails that he used to slash the throats of his victims. After a period of latency, The Bat makes his presence known again just as the town gets wrapped up in a scandal over a million dollars that has been stolen from the local bank. Could The Bat be the local sawbones Dr. Wells (Vincent Price), or perhaps Van Gorder’s new butler, Warner (John Sutton)? It could be any number of people who seem to have interest in that million bucks, and Van Gorder must figure it out before she finds herself on the wrong side of The Bat’s claws (cue bad organ music).

With a synopsis that includes serial killers and claws ripping out throats, I feel that I should warn you: if you’re looking for dark and gritty, you’re barking up the wrong tree here. Think less A Nightmare on Elm Street and more an episode of Murder She Wrote. Von Gorder banters with pretty much everyone in the flick and while people are murdered, it’s coated in a candy shell of silliness. Granted, I think some of the silliness was unintentional, such as The Bat’s attacks that resemble an Austin Powers-like “judo chop.” I genuinely had to rewind one such scene as my mind refused to accept that his victim had been mortally wounded.

Also, here’s a spoiler alert that I really don’t think will be of any surprise to anyone who watches more than five minutes of this film: Vincent Price is not The Bat. The producers, however, clearly knew they were working with a man whose name was synonymous with sinister, so they really laid it on thick to make him a red herring. After all, Dr. Wells may be the town doctor and coroner, but he seems to have a lot of extra time to perform research on the local bat population. At one point, when the local detective is investigating his lab, he flips a switch that turns on a light-up bat fixture that has no apparent purpose other than to make someone think the owner is obsessed with bats. [End of spoiler alert.]

Aside from Price, The Bat boasts some stars that would be pretty impressive if you were born during The Great Depression. Agnes Moorehead would go on to play Samantha’s mother, Endora, on Bewitched, but her earlier years actually saw her in classic films including Citizen Kane. Years before taking on the role of Judy Hollander, Darla Hood could be seen carousing with the Little Rascals in the Our Gang shorts (Darla was a straight-up baller, too, as she was the love interest for three members of the gang during her stint with the group).

Talkie stars aside, one of the drawbacks to The Bat is that it tends to drag in the middle. It has a solid premise, but it seems that writer/director Crane Wilbur tried to weave too many threads into the movie. After a while, they get messy and tangled to the point where my mind just kind of checked out until Price was back onscreen.

Plus, for a movie about an old town with a dark past, it definitely lacks in the creepy factor. I could have done with a well-placed fog machine, or some funky gothic architecture. Instead, Wilbur puts most of his energy into the dialogue, which isn’t terribly surprising given that his career output was more focused on writing than directing. Thus, we get a movie where the chit-chat takes over at the expense of suspense and atmosphere.

One big thing that this move does have going for it is a pronounced feminist streak, at least for a movie from the 1950s. Sure, most of the women are in this movie primarily to be placed in various forms of peril, but Van Gorden and her assistant Lizzie Allen (Lenita Lane) are very well-written and have much more going on than the men, who have a 90% chance of being stupid, evil, dead, or a combination of all three. Honestly, this town is filled with incompetent boobs who are constantly trying to screw each other over, but the women for the most part persevere.

Overall, I get the sense that The Bat is a movie that works better if watched with a group. This is one of those B-movie flicks that begs for the Mystery Science Theater treatment, but doing that alone is only entertaining for so long before you realize that you’re just talking to yourself. So, if you want to get your Vincent Price fix this Halloween and you think this might be the way to go, grab a couple of pals first. And like any good campy movie, you can incorporate a drinking game. Just take a shot every time someone uses the name "The Bat." But be warned, you’ll likely pass out well before you find out The Bat’s true identity.